Mapsend Directroute

[+The Bennett Family]

Has anyone tried the Magellan MapSend DirectRoute software yet?

 

They are promising to bring a european version out soon, and I would like to try it with my Meridian

 

I just thought, that as it's already out in the states, what the general opinion of it is.

 

Cheers,

Gaz.

[+SBPhishy]

While there are some small complaints about it "hijacking" your GPS settings every once in a while, and the occasional "bad" routing job, the overall consensus seems to be one of praise.

 

I have it, and I love it. It works great, and I have very little complaints about it. The backlight always coming on is annoying, but other than that, is is quite accurate, thorough, and up to date.

 

I would reccomend it for sure.

[robertlipe]

I scribbled my thoughts on it at http://www.mtgc.org/robertlipe to help folks considering it.

 

With several months of it behind me now, I'd have to say that I really like DirectRoute itself but the 5.12 firmware for Gold/Plat is dying the death of a thousand paper cuts. There is no individual deal-breaking problem, but there are bucket loads of annoyances. (Backlight, crashes, clearing gotos, zillions of keypresses required for caching, blatant disregard for map settings, etc.)

[+Deckyon]

Funny, I have seen none of the problems described here and I have been using DR for a couple months now as well. It took us door-to-door on a 500 mile trip.

 

Of course, I always use TOPO maps for caching, not the DR. I have 3 128MB SD-RAM cards: 1 with Topo, 1 with DR and 1 with S&D.

[+SBPhishy]

When routing yourself to a cache, it can sometimes get a little annoying, having to switch from a street route to a point to point when you finally get to the area. The hijacking of settings will not happen if you cancel the street route before it ends, or let it end by itself (I cant remember which one!) You must notice the backlight. With every prompt that Direct Route gives, the backlight comes on. If you dont have it connected to external power, it will turn off at whatever time you have the backlight timer set to. I have noticed however, that if you have it on external power (your cig lighter) the light will not turn off, unless you turn it off manually. I thought this was kind of strange.

[robertlipe]

Deckyon, of course if you're using Topo instead of DirectRoute, you wont find the annoyance of DirectRoute annoying becuase, well, you're not using DirectRoute.

 

As I said, no item is individually a reason to NOT use DR, but every one of them is real and all but one is experienced by every user of DR. (The crashes are reserved for fast typists, apparently.) Of course, the degree that having, say, your backtrack and pos->dest lines turned off apparently bugs you less than it bugs me so it's somewhat subjective.

 

If Magellan would fix the firmware bugs in 5.12, DR would be an amazing "no excuses" solution and I'd highly recommend it. As of today, I can't give it a 'no excuses' recommendation. They could fix the f/w, not touch DR itself (well, at lleast until i go to Alaska this summer which would let me remind Magellan that Alaska really is part of both the U.S. and North America) and make me a Very Happy Customer.

 

SBPhishy, what's "a little annoying" when you're hunting a half dozen caches becomes maddening when you're knocking down 20 or more in a night. Those keystrokes and backlight timeouts REALLY add up when you have to navigate each menu three times (once for a street route to get you there in the car, once for a PTP route to get you there on foot, and once to delete this waypoint). A paper cut is just "a little annoying" when you have one, but a real problem if you have a bunch of them!

[+DustyJacket]

Having a Meridian Color, I like having the backlight come on.

I think Magellan/Thales needs to use different options for the different GPSrs since it seems most non-color units don't like it.

 

They could do away with the excessive beeping. 5 seconds is more than enough.

 

I find that ALL setting reset when I do: GOTO -> Stop Routing, except the 250 proximity alarm. Not a deal killer but somewhat annoying.

 

Every now and then it does not resume North Up map orientation, but that is seldom.

 

Magellan needs to woirk a few bugs out, but will they know about them? Is someone communicating to them?

 

I do like the fact that it resumes routing even after I miss a turn and eventually get back on the route, even though I may have bypassed several turns.

 

I am happy with DR. I could be even happier, though.

[+road_rascal]

I have it, but I'm having problems and it may or may not be related to the software. Whenever I try to upload maps to my card reader, 3 out of the 4 maps will upload, then the 4th will lock up everything. I haven't figured out if it's the Mapsend software, my card reader/ writer, my ancient computer, or a combination of both. What works best for me is to save the maps to the hard drive then upload them to the card reader, then change the filename (from detail00.img to whatever.img). Both of my CD-ROM drives have a hard time reading the map CD so I may have a defective disc .

[+SBPhishy]

SBPhishy, what's "a little annoying" when you're hunting a half dozen caches becomes maddening when you're knocking down 20 or more in a night.

 

Thats true. Obviously, when you go "power caching" or whatnot, you will get fed up with the constant run arounds. I definitely find it annoying, but I am just hopeful for a fix in the next Firmware updates.

 

Overall, I like the program a lot. It's also great to be able to plot your waypoints on the computer, and see where they are before going to get them.

[+The Bennett Family]

Thanks to everyone for the feedback, the general concensus seems mostly positive.

I guess I'll just have to wait patiently for it to be released now

Cheers,

Gaz.

[+Night Stalker]

I have not upgraded to Directroute for a couple of reasons. Maybe someone can advise me concerning one of them. I am a SporTrak Pro owner and am concerned about what kind of map detail I will have when going after a cache. I understand the Directroute will be great as long as I am on a road, but most of the caches I encounter are way off road. Does this program contain information equivilant to my Mapsend Topo? I assume there is no way to download both maps and switch between them.

[+embra]

You've got it pretty much the way it is...DR looks a lot like Streets & Destinations--i.e., Topo without the topo data. The difference is enough so that I like to have both Topo and DR files on my Meridian's SD card. I do use the DR maps most of the time, but sometimes the topo information is nice to have.

 

AFAIK you would be limited with a SporTrak to choosing between your maps at upload time.

[+Deckyon]

Um, for the issues writing to the card, have Mapsend write the map to the Hard Drive, then copy it to the SD card via card reader. I have never had problems with that method.

[+embra]

SporTrak = no card, thus one single map file at a time.

[+Night Stalker]

SporTrak Pro will allow me to download up to 3 maps at a time, but with 2 different programs I am not sure whether it would allow me to load a saved file from one program into the other, and once loaded I have no clue how you would force the unit to use the map you wanted. When you turn on the unit and it obtains enough satellites it automatically accesses a topo map if you have downloaded one for that area. Even if you could download both maps how would it decide which one you actually wanted to use?

[+SBPhishy]

I don't think it would work. But if it does, go to menu, then map utilities, then change map.

[+DustyJacket]

yikes, I thought I was on another DR thread, so I just duplicated an earlier post.

Edited March 6, 2004 by DustyJacket

[+garri]

I am not satisfied with Mapsend Streets Europe, altought the big cities has all the streets, the city where i live (more than 50,000 inhabitants) only can see 8 streets and isn't updated.

 

How can i know that the directroute in Europe will be greater that mapsend streets?

[+embra]

SporTrak Pro will allow me to download up to 3 maps at a time

<snip>

I don't want to hijack the thread, but let me ask for an opportunity to clarify my understanding (or lack thereof)...

 

On the Meridian you can only download a single detail map file at a time with the serial cable because MapSend variants always overwrite the existing file with the same name...it requires a card reader to allow changing names and moving them to the card.

 

With their similarity in firmwares, I thought you'd have that same limitation--how do you get 3 files in your SporTrak? You do mean separate files and not regions combined into a single file? Is this a devlopment with recent firmware? Or have I been off in la-la land--again?

 

I would think that even with three files to choose from, you don't have a means to choose among them. SBPhishy's in a better position to give advice here, having both a Meridian and a SporTrak. But I know on the Meridian, one needs to use the Card Utiliities menu to switch maps (a section of the menu obviously not on SporTraks).

Edited March 6, 2004 by embra

[+SBPhishy]

I feel kind of on the spot now. I have never tried loading more than one region into my sportrak. I would imagine the only way to do it is to mod your ini file, and then load a few regions at one time, that are in one file. But I dont think its possible to load different actual files into the spotrak. I wouldnt imagine that they would show up in the map utilities section under change map, however, because they are all in one file. I have heard when you do this to the Meridian, when loading maps of a different area (different actual area, miles from the other one) that the gps will automatically show the area that you are in. With using DR and topo however, of maps of the same area, It wouldnt seem like there would be any way to switch between them. I dont think it will work, but I have yet to try it.

Edited March 6, 2004 by SBPhishy

[+katguy]

Thinking about it, I believe Embra is correct. I have a ST-Pro and have 3 disjoint regions loaded (Chicago IL, Columbus OH, and Baltimore MD). I have a number of other region selections that go in from time to time, but I think they are only independant as far as Mapsend on my PC is concerned. When I want to swap a region, I have to select all regions I want in Mapsend (even if some are currently present on the GPSr) and then it downloads them all.

 

edit: added disjoint for clarification

Edited March 7, 2004 by katguy

[+embra]

I didn't express myself very clearly (agin)...I wasn't trying to put SBPhishy on the spot to provide an answer to my question, I thought he/you were in a better position than I to advise Night Stalkersince you had both a SporTrak and a Meridian.

 

It sounds like my confusion is just stemming from our frequent confabulation of regions and map files. I gather that you can put three regions into a single file that can then be uploaded to a SporTrak. That's would be in line with my understanding of How Things Work.

 

It would indeed be impossible to combine a DirectRoute region with a Topo region in a single file because they are generated by two different programs.

[+Night Stalker]

I didn't think about that, but I am sure you are right. I select multiple regions to upload to the GPS, but since we are talking about 2 different programs I am pretty sure that I am SOL unless you could import regions from 1 program into the other.

[+UncleRMC]

I have a Meridian Gold and use 2 32mb sd cards. One is filled with the largest topo map I could fit on it and the other the largest DR map I could fit on it.

 

I carry both with me and use DR most of the time. When I'm gonna go bushwacking, as I did today, I pop the topo sd card in and I'm good to go.

[+2LuknF8]

I have a ST Pro and just purchased the MeriColor. DR works great but the firmware for both the STPro & MeriColor, well, sucks. It did not bother me too much with the ST but it reeeaaalllly drains the juice on the Color. I also found the Color hard to see in daylight (even with the backlight on) and it was even hard to tell if the backlight was on or not in full sunlight. The Color is also slow. The extra selections make it difficult and having to switch from street-to-street to point-to-point upon arrival at a cache site usually made me the last to arrive when caching with friends.

To cut this one short, I just ordered a Garmin 60cs. A friend has the 60c and it is well laid out, very quick and I can see it in daylight. The 30 hr battery life is a real plus, too.

Magellan will replace my MeriColor which will then be given to my girlfriend to use to navigate around town as well as for the occasional caching run. I had resisted as long as I could in buying a Garmin but the 60cs seems to offer everything I will need (at least until something better truly comes along). I jsut wish they used an SD card for extra memory but the ST worked well for wherever I went when uploading local maps.

[+SBPhishy]

I have a ST-Pro and have 3 disjoint regions loaded

 

So, how do you switch between them?

[robertlipe]

I have a ST-Pro and have 3 disjoint regions loaded

 

So, how do you switch between them?

If he doesn't have DirectRoute, the answer is "quite easily, thank you". All the previous Mapsend mutants allow up to 4 regions to be combined in a single upload to ST Pro. As he enters one region, the maps will automatically Do The Right Thing. All the regions appear ont he "database" menu option in the obvious place.

 

BTW, I have both Meridian (Plat) and ST Map (Pro-not) and DirectRoute and Topo and Streets and will offer that there are non-obvious differences in the receivers - if you're comparing apples to apples (i.e. not different firmware and not invoking 'card utilities' on a unit that doesn't support SD cards) they're identical in these regards.

 

I think these discussions get bogged down in confusing naming of products that have only a little in common...Either katguy isn't usin DirectRoute or he's applied an unsupported change to his *.ini files to allow multiple regions in DR.

 

I wonder how many customers (like 2LuknF8) Magellan will loose as they continue to deny these problems....